Honors Faculty/Staff Spotlight: John Fracchia!

IT’S OUR LAST“Honors Faculty/Staff Spotlight” FOR THE SPRING SEMESTER! If you have a Honors faculty member or Honors professor that you want to nominate, please email TTaylor6@ithaca.edu with their name and !

This Honors Faculty/Staff Spotlight goes to John Fracchia! Read below to find out more about him!

What Honors course(s) do you currently teach?

JF: Meaning Making in Your Career: Finding the Authentic Story of Your Life’s Journey

What sort of morning routine do you have to get jazzed for class?

JF: I’m the breakfast person in our house, which involves feeding myself, my wife, our seven cats, and a dog. There are lots of moving parts and by the time I’m done, my blood is pumping for an exciting day. Usually I get my Alexa “flash-briefing” while I’m doing everything so that I know what’s going on in the world, and sometimes I play music.

Do you have any hidden talents?

JF: “Talent” is such a subjective word, but I am involved in the arts as part of ComedyFLOPs, a local improv troupe that performs monthly shows at The Haunt. Each month we designate a different community based charity to support, which is particularly meaningful to me. I also wrote and published a novel, Cataclysm: The Myst Clipper Shicaine, which is the shameless plug portion of our program.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you in a class?

JF: Nothing comes immediately to mind (my students might have a different opinion), but my Fall 2018 class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the late afternoon and the Biology Department typically had a speaker AND food every Thursday. We would wait until they had moved to the presentation part of their program and then take a break from class to descend on the food scraps like vultures. We nicknamed it Scavenger Thursday and while we probably should have been embarrassed, in truth, we weren’t. Thank you, Biology Department! 🙂

If you won the lottery and decided to give up teaching, what would you do instead?

JF: I would probably start a foundation with the purpose of providing seed money to organizations that need a lift in order to bring great ideas into being. I would also support the arts and set up scholarships for students without enough resources.

If you could pass on any wisdom to your students, what would you share?

JF: Discover what is truly meaningful to you, share it with other people, and look for opportunities to engage with it whenever possible. It may lead you to a fulfilling career and it will almost certainly lead you to an extraordinary life.